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Israel running campaign against Jeremy Corbyn

An app operated as part of an Israeli government propaganda campaign issued a “mission” for social media users to make comments against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, accusing him of anti-Semitism.

As my colleague Adri Nieuwhof explains, Corbyn hosted a meeting titled “Never Again – For Anyone” with Hajo Meyer, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and an anti-Zionist who spoke out strongly for Palestinian rights.

Meyer passed away in 2014.

The Act.IL app asks users to comment on Facebook in response to a Huffington Post UK story about Corbyn’s alleged “anti-Israel remarks,” which it claims are “often a way to hide anti-Semitism.”

The “mission” directs users to click “like” on a comment by Facebook user “Nancy Saada,” and write their own comments echoing her criticisms of Labour.

“Nancy” has posted elsewhere on her Facebook profile a photo of herself in an Israeli army uniform posing on an armored vehicle draped with an Israeli flag.

It is part of a long-running influence operation by Israel and its lobby groups to smear Corbyn, a veteran Palestine solidarity activist, and to label the party he leads “institutionally anti-Semitic.”

The operation also aims to push Labour, where there is strong support for Palestinian rights among the grassroots, in a more pro-Israel direction.

A covert element of the effort revealed last year by the undercover Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby involved attempts by the Israeli embassy to set up a grassroots pro-Israel organization for Labour youth.

The campaign has found support among the declining Labour right, including many of the party’s lawmakers, some of them involved with pro-Israel groups.

The Jewish Labour Movement, an anti-Palestinian group deeply linked to the Israeli government, has been at the forefront of the effort.

In a Guardian opinion piece on Friday, Corbyn offered “dialogue with community organizations, including the Jewish Labour Movement” to discuss their demand that the IHRA document be adopted in full, even as he acknowledged that some of its provisions have “been used by those wanting to restrict criticism of Israel that is not anti-Semitic.”

It is unclear what Corbyn hopes to achieve in “dialogue” with a group that has close ties to a hostile foreign power committed to manipulating his party from within.

The most common response to my prediction on social media was to welcome their departure.

But be warned: Mainstream media which have fueled sensational and often baseless smears will falsely portray any combined exit of right-wing lawmakers and anti-Palestinian activists as an “exodus of Jews” from the Labour Party. And yes, columnists supporting them will probably even use the same hackneyed biblical allusion.

Comments

I'm 66 years old, and have never seen such a concentrated, vicious and deliberately inaccurate character assassination campaign as this. It isn't just Israel, though I'm sure that they are stoking the fire, but also the establishment, which is terrified that a real socialist will bring about a more equal society and redistribute their obscene wealth to the rest of society.

The anti-semitism furore is mostly manufactured and I haven't heard a single example, and certainly nothing which would justify the incredible attacks on Corbyn. It is clear that this campaign is targetted at Corbyn, as apparently there was no problem with anti-semitism before he was elected leader. The msm, especially the BBC, has a great responsibility for this campaign, with endlessly repeated stories of faux outrage at relatively banal and benign measures e.g. the definition of anti-semitism, which has been fully adopted apart from part of one example.

Agree with Richard Burton. I've yet to see these examples of Corbyn's alleged antisemitism or even Labour's for that matter. So much smoke and mirrors but little substance. Of course, there have been some Labour ratbags making stupid antisemitic statements just as there are Tories who do it including Boris Johnson's ugly anti-Islamic insults (mainly ignored). I no longer live in the UK but I'm disappointed with the Jewish community who are silently going along with this. It's confirmed by my remaining Jewish family members who say they do not want to get involved as they fear the hatred being stoked by the so-called Jewish community leaders and the largely right-wing media will backfire on them as a community and they will become the butt of angry voters if Labour loses the election. But will Israel give a toss? Of course not.

Having visited The Holy Land since 1973, I know how much worse the conditions are for the Palestinian Israelis, as well as the Occupied Territories. J. Corbyn is the only party leader to say he will recognise Palestine, if he forms a government . It is so obvious that this is a reason that the Israeli govt is orchestrating this constant attack on Labour. How can the mainstream News media not see this? Also it is never reported the 'only one state' solution that Netanyahu has got is written in stone! I despair.

If these attacks on the Left generally - and Palestine solidarity and human rights campaigns specifically - represent a marked shift in Israeli policy under Netanyahu (which they do) it would be helpful to name that. Why are the so-called "Jewish Labour Movement" working hand-in-glove with a brutal murderer who calls Orban and Trump "friend?"

The group(s) behind this are going to an inordinate amount of trouble to smear Corbyn as an anti-Semite, which he clearly ISN'T. Personally I think that this began with the parliamentary Labour Party and their efforts to overthrow him almost as soon as he was democratically elected by the party's membership. NB contrast HIS election to leadership with that of Theresa May, she was 'elected unopposed' being the ONLY candidate.The PLP are on the Blairite Right Wing of the party and don't represent the majority of party members. Corbyn was allowed to stand ONLY because the PLP thought they 'knew' that no one woud vote for him, when in fact his decades of principled stance on many issues resonated with the members.Now once he was elected that should have been it, but the resigned en masse from the Shadow Cabinet, tried to rig another election but were thwarted at every turn by the fact that the party members actually wanted him. So, that having failed, they moved on to do a deal with the devil ie the Israeli Government. And when I say a 'deal with the devil' I don't mean that Israel is INHERENTLY evil BUT, doing deals with a foreign power to influence who leads the opposition party in this country COULD be considered treasonous and is certainly unlawful. Just look at the allegations of Russian interference in the US and that was mild compared to what the PLP have done!!However, I think the frenzy reached fever pitch when a Jewish Holocaust Survivor is called anti-Semitic by those who are not Jewish purely because he disagrees with Zionism.I'm hoping we will see the backlash that how now started, grow and gain ground when people realise that this is nothing short of a foreign power conniving with a rogue section in the Labour Party to influence British politics.The BBC are often accused of bias. Labour think they're biased, the Tories think they're biased. And the BBC uses the fact that that EVERYONE thinks they're biased to deny it when they PROMOTE Blairism...

You are more than welcome to share my comment with anyone you like. It is vitally important, and imperative, that the unvarnished truth about Illegitimate Israel is known to as many people as possible.

Um does anyone among voters in Britain see what's going on and how OBVIOUS this witch Hunt is? My biggest question is why is Corbyn making concession after concession?
Do Brits recognize that if the language adopted making criticism of Israel illegal, means YOUR FREE SPEECH RIGHTS ARE OVER? And that if this language is accepted it really means that your government is then occupied by a foreign power and that any hope of human rights for citizens is OVER?.
They are not just attacking Jeremy they are attacking every British citizen too.

Couldn't this be deemed political interference similar to Russia and the U.S. (as alleged) shouldn't the Israeli government have this explained very clearly to them. What is the difference? What makes this deliberate political interference in another country any more acceptable. No-one should be able to get away with such interference with another countries democracy

The fact is, instead of Jeremy Corbyn giving "...concession after concession...", a la Neville Chamberlain, with appeasement, and apologizing for anti-Semitism, he should be attacking these white supremacist Jewish Zionists for exactly what they are: anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, anti-Ethiopian, anti-Sudanese, anti-Christian, anti-Muslim, anti-Druze, and anti-anyone else who is not a white Jews who resides in Nazi-like Israel. And comparing Zionism with Nazism is now, without question, legitimate (for this last comment I know this will not be posted) since Illegitimate Israel is now, officially, an apartheid illegitimate state.
There should now be an official definition of white supremacist Jewish Zionist hate that advocates smears, violence, murder, and war, along with the spurious IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, that white supremacist Jewish Zionists postulate toward anyone who is not a white Jewish Zionist in or out of Illegitimate Israel.
Mr. Corbyn needs to be far more outspoken, and aggressive, and attack them for just exactly who they are. Calling someone an anti-Semite, like the boy who cried, "Wolf!", means absolutely nothing, except what Jewish Zionists want it to mean (Humpty Dumpty). This is simply a Zionist tactic to suppress free speech and stifle dissent.
Finally, Mr. Corbyn should be putting Zionists and Zionism on the defensive!

Agree with Richard, this campaign to smear Corbyn, who does not need large donors like lord Levy anymore,is directed by a rogue state in the Middle East.
Labour must now put an end to the split loyalty riven friends of this interfering country and be friends to all nations that have declared their borders. The PLP will have to grow up, hand in their knifes and start working for their constituencies, rather than the vested interests they have become accustomed to. We do not need another party splitting the vote, we neeed a fair proportional voting system and a axreform for multinationals....

This smear campaign is so vicious and potentially damaging that I have to ask, is Jeremy Corbyn really so dangerous that people have to resort to such shameful, dirty tricks to bring him down. I have never witnessed such shameful behaviour and some of it from Labour MPs such as Margaret Hodge. Even his own deputy has behaved in a disgraceful fashion. Israel just wants JC to stop supporting Palestine and have resorted to disgraceful behaviour basically encouraging people to lie.

A few weeks ago while working in Finchley I met a Jewish family, whom I had occasion to speak to about another matter. Inter alia the husband told me he was a professional anti-semitism worker. I asked him what he thought of the Corbyn issue and he said he had worked with the Labour party and did not think Corbyn was anti-semitic, it just wasn't high on his list of political priorites. That rings true. Corbyn has spent his life being vilified for unpopular political positions, and has developed a strategy for dealing with it. This strategy was fine when he was a back bencher, but it doesn't work now.

Someone mentioned this series from 1988, three episodes as I recall, saying how eerie the parallels were with what is happening today. I'm sure it's still available and definitely worth watching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

This is the sort of oppression some people have been suffering for decades, to which many Western politicians and citizens have all turned their faces away; its now happening at home, to our close relative and potential messiah and suddenly eyes become wide open! The zionists got every Western politicians (even the stronger Americans) by their balls, it’s nearly too late to fight them off now, as a result of decades of ignorance... but we can try just maybe our society can regain her freedom again.

I'm glad to be able to contribute to this article. The Guardian articles on this topic don't allow comments. The onslaught seems endless. The most recent, about the use of the word "Zionist" in 2013 is ludicrous. Corbyn uses the word in a totally accurate way, not as a euphemism for "Jews". Why is the Guardian pushing this so vigorously?